1 of 5 | Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) develops Tinder and Bumble in “Swiped,” on Hulu Sept. 19. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9 (UPI) — In the tradition of movies like Blackberry and Air, the new film Swiped, on Hulu Sept. 19, chronicles the development of dating apps Tinder and Bumble. Unfortunately, this biopic collapses under the unwieldy themes connected with those apps.
Swiped opens in 2012 as Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) pitches tech CEOs an app to connect volunteers with orphanages. Cardify founder Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer) isn’t interested in the idea but hires Whitney to be his marketing director.
Cardify’s parent company is also working on a dating app. Whitney comes up with the name Tinder and a plan to get 20-somethings to use it, but she discovers toxic environments both on the app and in her workplace.
Swiped is bookended by two disclaimers stating that, though inspired by actual events, the film is fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Neither are necessary, as it’s unlikely any viewer could mistake the shoehorning of key events into a Hollywood narrative as factual.
The movie shows Whitney and her colleagues experiencing perfect moments of inspiration at board meetings like other films show musicians discovering their signature song. This continues when she later develops Bumble as an alternative to Tinder.
While Whitney sells college sororities on Tinder, the sisters tell her they already have social activities and don’t have an issue meeting people. Whitney and her fellow developers created an app that wasn’t needed but it worked regardless, making social interactions the worse for it since.
The selling point of Tinder is how the app can spare anyone the momentary discomfort of approaching someone who isn’t interested, by guaranteeing that any interactions are mutual. Once she gets the sorority on board, it’s easy to sell fraternities on the platform where all the “hottest girls on campus” (Whitney’s words) are listed.
The toxicity at Tinder corrupts Whitney as she becomes susceptible to the ingrained misogyny of corporate culture. She succumbs to pressure and gaslighting in the office, and doesn’t challenge Tinder’s position that allows harassment of female users to continue.
The harmful environment intensifies when Sean hires Justin Mateen (Jackson White), who briefly dated Whitney in real life and whom she accused of sexual harassment and discrimination, as a co-founder. Though Whitney is also a co-founder, Sean and Justin keep her out of the spotlight when Tinder wins awards and is featured in Time magazine.
Justin further disrespects Whitney by talking over her and calling her “babe” in meetings. After Whitney breaks up with him, the film shows Justin sending her threatening texts and calling her worse names to colleagues.
There are such relevant issues at play in the story behind Swiped, it is a shame the film doesn’t address them with more nuance. People should be outraged by this behavior and by the double standards, but they don’t need a lecture.
Swiped also highlights Beth (Mary Neely), a Cornell business school graduate whose degree is going to waste when Tinder assigns her to delete users’ obscene photos on the app. Since the film doesn’t give Beth more to do either, it also uses her as a token character to show the horrors to which Tinder subjected women.
Later, Swiped throws Beth a bone by involving her in Bumble, but she’s not a character with a life outside the company. Neither is Whitney, whose personal life is only addressed when the harassment escalates to death threats outside of business hours.
When Justin claims Tinder’s women only report guys who reject them and Sean cites First Amendment freedoms while calling Whitney emotional, it feels like the film’s shorthand for misogyny. They’re cliches because men in and out of authority say both frequently, but cliches lack dramatic integrity.
The real-life Whitney eventually signed a nondisclosure agreement in her 2014 settlement with Tinder. Even when the agreement was leaked, she was still bound by it, so she could not participate in the film. Lacking her perspective makes Swiped feel like hearsay.
James thoughtfully portrays the panic attacks Whitney experienced from the harassment and death threats she endured after her settlement. Unfortunately, the film simply resumes lecture mode despite her heartfelt performance.
After the settlement, Whitney meets up with former Tinder colleague Tisha (Myha’la), only for Tisha to lecture her about selling out her female colleagues to get ahead. Tisha’s points are valid, but the delivery the film affords her undermines them.
The motivation for developing Bumble — aiming to provide women a positive experience — is the heart of this entire story. The development of the app, however, still occurs with the same contrived moments of inspiration with which Tinder was portrayed earlier.
Bumble’s hook is that women control the initial communication when matched, making it a game changer among dating apps. In practice, this often meant women said “hey” and it was effectively still up to men to make a traditional introduction, when it came to heteronormative matches at least.
While a biopic perhaps isn’t the place to further analyze the practical application of Bumble’s format, women on the app will have to answer whether the platform’s harassment policies effectively curtail the amount of obscene photos they receive.
Alas, Swiped concludes with Whitney navigating another incident of sexual harassment, as she did before Blackstone acquired Bumble and appointed her CEO. This time, Whitney speaks out, in a dramatization of what was a written statement in real life.
Unfortunately, Swiped gets so bogged down in depicting all the evils of Tinder and Cardify, it leaves little time for the characters to react to them as humans. Whitney and Tisha are relegated to citing statistics about female leaders in tech and talking points about patterns of abuse.
In addition, Forbes writer Marta (Coral Peña) is assigned a story on online dating by an editor who cuts the topical stories she really wants to write. Marta appears periodically throughout Swiped, sometimes speaking with Tinder whistleblowers off the record, but never directly impacting the story like the reporters in films such as Spotlight and She Said.
Tinder, Bumble and other dating apps that rule the social lives of single people warrant cinematic exploration. Unfortunately, Swiped proves unable to tackle the material the way The Social Network took on social media, or even how Flamin’ Hot explored Cheetos.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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